


Wasteland Magick-Man

by Roku_MolesterOfScience



Category: Elder Scrolls, Fallout 4
Genre: Boston is the real size of the actual city, Brotherhood of Steel isn't incompetent, F/M, Garvey does his damn job, Ghosts - Beware!, Ghouls give me the scare, Martin doesn't understand what is going on, Proper guns are rare, The word doesn't revolve around a protagonist, There is no Vault-Dweller, There may or may not be heavy influence from Metro, Tunnel-snakes live longer than surface snakes, the Wasteland is a scary place
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-12
Updated: 2020-07-12
Packaged: 2021-03-04 22:35:48
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 20,062
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25224013
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Roku_MolesterOfScience/pseuds/Roku_MolesterOfScience
Summary: Martin never wanted a life of excitement. At most, he wanted recognition for his studies into the properties of pseudo-arcane components implemented into advanced alchemy. For his troubles, he was given exactly what he wanted the least, but perhaps needed the most. He just wished he'd been allowed to change out of his lab-robes first.
Relationships: Lots of others because the world doesn't revolve around the MC, OC/Piper
Kudos: 1





	1. Chapter 1

**So, we're back at it again. Kind of. This isn't Talia, though it does incorporate the same Elder Scrolls world she comes from, just...earlier. Like, before she was born, earlier, and with completely different characters.**

**I was told at one point that the best cure for writer's block is to write something else, so I tried my hand at a Fallout crossover. Usually I don't try my hands at anything sci-fi related, since my ventures into Aspect taught me how much I suck at writing firefights with guns. Still, I'm releasing this as something of a pilot, just to see if there's any interest for it.**

**I am in these months reminded of the start of 2020, when the #NewGuy was trending, and we all thought "oh, what a wholesome year we're starting when this is the first meme of the year to go viral."  
** **Oh, and this story is marked 'M', because with my record, someone's going to get dismembered. And laid. Maybe at the same time, this _is_ Fallout.**

* * *

**Chapter 1.**

**Any Landing You Can Walk Away From...**

* * *

It was decidedly a couch.

The surface was of some strange material, cracked and flaking with paint, and not at all like linen as he was used to. There was metal in it too, he could feel that, curled iron beneath the cushions, brittle with rust and decay.

The question was not at all whether or not it truly _were_ a couch, such as it was. It had never been the question, never the center of his confusion which was, in this very moment, surpassing his capacity for even the most base of slurs. Before him, rather than the College of Whisper's laboratory, was a desolate and wild cityscape. That it was a city was easily identifiable, tall buildings of brick and wood clustering about, like strewn by a barely caring hand. Grasses, in some places seeming as tall as himself, grew everywhere not paved by tiles or what seemed a kind of black dirt, broken and cracked by time.

And rather than his colleague, Mari de Droumont, there was not a soul to be seen. Not even the distant sounds of banter, or the cries of children beneath his study's window. There was only silence, but for a warm wind caressing his skin.

How had it come to this, that he now sat here, alone and unknowing of his surroundings?

" _Is that you, Martin?" It was Mari de Droumont, breaking the silence of his work as well the darkness. When she entered the room, bringing with her the lights of the well-lit corridor, he could have flinched from the sudden contrast; "It is well past midnight, you know? Are you incapable of adhering to College rules? And in such darkness?"_

" _I know."_ _He'd told her, barely deigning her with a look before resuming his work. If he stopped now...no, he could forget about it all if he stopped now. The song was long past, gone as he'd ground up the last of the precious leaves. Nirnroot was expensive, beyond what any student could have afforded without strain. Mucking it up, he knew, would mean not just wasted time, but enough septims thrown out the window that he'd not have another chance for the year._

_The Breton scoffed, no doubt shaking her head at his methodological - and time-consuming - work. He heard the door shut again, and soon after the muffled hums of candlelight spells extinguishing. He was tired, nearing the limits of what he knew he could take. Spending all day cooped up around the vapors and steaming pots and whatnot, it would work any man to the bone, exhaust him._

" _Almost done..." He spoke to himself, more so than anything or anyone else. For, really, there was no one else. Most people, he knew, enjoyed company when working, no matter the distractions it might cause. Personally, he liked the quiet, the solitude. It wasn't loneliness, per se, as much as it was self-imposed isolation. People were noisy, or could be at least. It wasn't that he didn't like people, at all, but they posed...yes, distractions._

_And he nearly was, in truth. It wasn't until he fired up the last vial, and introduced a spark to the runes within the stand, initiating combustion of the gasses produced by the boiling concoction, that something had...gone wrong._

_The vapors had started..._ sparking _, if his eyes hadn't betrayed him in those final moments. The air itself had shifted, thick with a smell as if he'd lit a magicka potion on fire. Even the ground had shifted, shaking and wobbling as if he'd stood on a plank at sea, rather than the solid stone of the College's dedicated laboratories. Mari could not have gone far, but even as he tried to shout, to call for help whatever she might have been capable of, not a sound passed. The air felt as if sucked from his lungs, like the dreams where even the fiercest shout would not even be a whisper._

_Then it had all just...faded._

_And he'd felt as if falling._

And now, here, he'd found himself dropped in a couch, like a child's discarded toy. Was he here, truly? Where even _was_ here, anyway? It seemed no place he could recognize, not even by reputation. Though he could recognize the buildings for what they were, the architecture was entirely foreign, and the landscape seemed like none he knew of. Was this Hammerfell, maybe? He'd never been there, but knew it to be arid, in many places outright deserts. But then, he _knew_ what Redguard architecture looked like, and this was not it.

Was he dreaming, then? It was strange to ask, because he'd never before dreamt with such clarity and range of sensations as now. He could _feel_ the leathery material of the couch beneath him, and smell the unfamiliar scents wafting on the warm wind. Decay mixed in with it all, but at the same time there was plant life, flowers. Could his dreams give him all this? Could he even boast an imagination capable of such? _Either this is a dream, an extraordinary one...Or I don't really want to consider where else I might be._

He'd known from the outset that playing around with Nirnroot was a venture into the frontiers of established magic. That his reasons for doing so were, relatively speaking, simple, had little bearing on the risks involved. Trying to work out an alchemagical tool for locating rare ingredients was a noble endevour, people had told him, though fewer had believed it possible. Those who'd outright doubted him had repeatedly hammered on about the dangers, and bemoaned his ceaseless curiosity. _All things considered..._

Had they been right? He hadn't yet moved from his seat, strange and slightly uncomfortable though it was, still too stunned to process much beyond his own thoughts. His skin felt like he'd been stung by some bug, an itch that seemed to come from nowhere and everywhere at once. A light pitch waned from his ears, and slowly, gradually, some semblance of sound returned.

There were new sounds, now, sounds he couldn't immediately identify. He couldn't hear a single bird, but the faint buzzing of insects was a welcome familiarity. In the distance, something that sounded like the barks of a dog echoed, along with the rustling of leaves in what really, to him, seemed a world devoid of the people who had wrought the city before him. If this was no plane of Oblivion, perhaps he'd come across something else? A phenomenon akin to when the Dwemeri people vanished from Nirn? _Though even then, judging by the ruins, it would seem a rather more violent disappearance than the Dwemer..._

Foreign to him though the place was, he was not blind to the signs of conflict that scarred the ruins. Even from here he could see what must have been the impacts from an artillery piece, large craters in the streets and houses. Redguard cannons could have done that, or a powerful enough battlemage. As his eyes wandered, Martin became aware of an oddity. Even amongst all the rest scattered about him, the stark whiteness stood out in the heaps of metallic scrap. It was just a couple dozen meters away. He had no need to move to realize that it was, in fact, a human skull.

The College of Whispers had those aplenty, of course. During his apprenticeship with Madame de Crue, he'd been introduced to the ways of healing fractures in the human skull, and the risks of resetting or restoring any bones that might have protruded into the brain itself. Even then, he felt with some certainty that this was no donation.

The stranger thing was, though, that it seemed to have been placed almost ritualistically, resting atop a broomstick, with arms of long, curled metal and pink gloves for hands. That, and some sort of spectacles of black glass on its face, dangling for lack of supporting nose. It seemed... _happy_ to see him, almost. _Am I in the realm of Sheogorath?_

Another sound then made itself known to him, though he realized slowly it had been going on for quite a few minutes by now. Repeated snaps, like the sound his own fingers could make, came from down below his little lookout. It was obviously _not_ someone snapping their fingers, but the irregular intervals made it blatantly obvious that the sound was not of natural origin. _Someone_ or _something_ was moving about down there, amongst the overgrown buildings.

Slowly, he stood from the outlandish sofa, and started making his way down the hill.

* * *

Piper would, if anyone bothered asking her, like to say she was a damn good reporter. Such claims, of course, included the guts to venture out beyond the protective walls of Diamond City, out into the Commonwealth and all it held in store.

For someone with guts. Which she had.

Said guts, however, were currently in a not-so-small risk of being dangled from a Super Mutant's meatbag, courtesy of the great, green menace behind her, currently thundering down the street, swinging some sort of rebar in the same way that Nat threw her dolls around. Only, she could take being hit by a doll.

Piper somehow doubted she could take being hit by the rebar. And so, she ran. Of course, she'd been here before, neck-deep in trouble and with nothing and nobody but her own wit and guts to get her the heck back _out_ of said trouble. Damn good thing too, or she'd have probably tried pleading with the big bastard. Lord knows she'd heard of people who'd tried that. Seen them too, sometimes, dangling from large hooks in the Super Mutant holdouts.

So, she'd picked out the smarter option, which meant running the soles off her heels. She'd learned long ago that Super Mutants weren't as slow as they seemed, oh no. Those brutes could pick up speed like nobody's business. No way no how to outrun them in a straight line. She was slowing it down a little, hopefully, expending precious bullets one by one, trying to hit...well, _something_ important. So far there wasn't much success in it, even though she was damn sure she'd hit him in the head at least once.

Running and gunning might be glamorous in the old magazines, but she'd be damned if it wasn't hard to pull off outside those colored pages.

Each time she wanted to actually _hit_ him, rather than just shooting blindly - and she _really_ didn't have the ammo for that kind of noise - she had to stop, turn, aim and squeeze. A 9mm wasn't much of a kicker, but tired as she was, worn down and dehydrated, not to mention her heart may or may not be going fast enough that the damn thing could have outrun the Super Mutant on its own, keeping a steady aim was a tricky thing. One eye shut, she drew a bead on the charging brute. The ground shook with each step. _Oh, wait, that's just my heart..._

"Right between...the eyes, how's that?"

A hollow _click_ was her answer. Not from the Mutant, though that'd have been worthy of its own headline, but from her gun. She wasted a moment, time she knew she really didn't have, staring at the gun like it had personally, deliberately, picked now of all times to run out of sweet, _sweet_ lead.

"You've gotta be kidding me..."

She gave her gun one last disgusted look before throwing it at the Super. For what it was worth, at least the new kind of projectile seemed to give him pause, for all the time it took the empty gun to hit, bounce and clatter to a stop on the broken asphalt. She'd already started running again before that, of course, the worn leather of her heels beating a frantic _tap-tap-tap_ against the road.

The Super was not far behind her, having realized the empty gun wasn't really all that dangerous. If anything, he seemed _angrier_ than before. Did Supers even _have_ stages of anger? Seemed like they were in perpetual states of " _me kill you!_ " all day.

**"Me! Kill! You!"**

Like that, really. Piper pumped her legs best she could, turning and dodging between alleyways, ruined houses and cracked streets, vaulting over crumbling walls and rusted cars. What she wouldn't have given for one of those to still work, and take her far, far away from here. Of course, the Wasteland was an uncaring bitch, and instead of giving her a working car - never mind the fact that she wouldn't even know how to _start_ it - it robbed her of buildings to slip around, and ended up switching out the ruined cityscape for the plains of the Commonwealth.

Out here, nothing but knee-high grasses and the occasional, twisted tree filled the landscape. No houses, no barriers, no nothing. Life had a pretty messed up sense of irony, really, considering it was somewhere out here that lightning had struck, literally from a blue sky. That alone had been enough to pique her curiosity, and now might just be what killed the cat.

**"STOP! RUNNING! DIE!"**

As suggestions went, that was a bad one, and Piper felt no particular compulsions to obey it. The tapping of her soles against broken concrete vanished, and only the muffled stomping of her boots through the dirt, and the rustling of dry grass. Idly, she considered calling for help, but threw the idea aside almost as quickly. No one would risk their hides against a Super unless they had some really _big_ guns, and if they did...well, the green bastard wasn't exactly being discreet.

Anyone willing to help her, they'd have stepped in by now. Calling for help would just be a waste of breath, and she needed that breath to keep running. Mom had once talked about animals from other parts of the world, that her mom had told her about. Name was long gone, but they'd escape faster predators by zig-zagging when running.

She did the same.

Of course, this was pretty much going from the frying pan and straight into some radioactive sludge. Strangely, she didn't feel nearly as afraid now as she'd been in the streets, even though she knew, really, that out here in the open the big bastard had would have an easier time catching up with her.

True to form, he sounded a _lot_ closer now than before. She could even hear the monster's labored breathing, each sounding more like an enraged Brahmin's than anything that resembled a human. Her own wasn't much better, ragged and heaving, her clothes starting to soak with sweat in the hot summer sun. The Wasteland's weather was a pain in the ass, even at the best of times.

_Especially_ at the best of times, since that's when it got hot as all kinds of Hell. And she was _not_ dressed for the heat...or running for her life, really. But she could blame the first one on herself. The latter? Not so much her clothes and more the Mutant having caught her out in the open.

_**"GOT! YOU!"** _

It did again, when she made to change directions. The pain wasn't immediate, but she could definitely _feel_ it when the rebar smashed against her side. She felt herself flying before the pain set in, but when it did...

Piper screamed.

She screamed a _lot_.

When she landed, it was in a crumbled, disoriented and agonizing heap. Her left arm felt like it'd been torn right off, set on fire and then slapped back on. She couldn't move it, at all. Her mouth was full of dirt, tears stung her eyes and washed the world away in a hazy blur, and her arm was as good as shattered.

She couldn't breathe, or move. Whatever juice had been driving her legs, it was gone and spent now. She couldn't even get back on her feet.

She became aware of the Super Mutant again, slowly, almost like it didn't even matter. But then it did, and it was towering over her, blotting out the sun with its massive, mutated bulk. It smiled down at her, the kind of smile a sadistic kid would give a bug before squashing it. In this case, more like before _eating_ the bug. _Oh...so...this is it, then?_

People always said that life would flash before your eyes when death approached. She'd wondered if it was true, because she'd been in the deep end enough times that it should have happened at least once at this point. Now...now was definitely the time for something like that.

The flash came, as expected, but there wasn't any vivid memories replaying, or anything, really. Maybe it got interrupted by her vomiting from the pain? She wasn't really sure, but...the Super had stopped smiling.

Actually, forcing some focus back into her eyes, the Super seemed to have entirely lost interest in her. Its eyes were somewhere else, ahead, out of her field of vision. There was noise too, muffled and indistinct. Then there was something sticking out of the Mutant's chest. _That's...ice? But it's summer..._

The Mutant dropped its weapon, and simply...stood there. Was she hallucinating? It _was_ a shard of ice the size of an arm sticking out of its chest, right? Another appeared then, as if she'd asked for it, snapping back the brute's head with the sheer force of impact. A spear of ice, in the hot Commonwealth sun... _Oh yeah, I'm hallucinating. Probably a good thing too, or I'd feel it ripping my arms off..._

Then the beast dropped, hitting the ground like a boulder. The sun was back, glaring into her eyes with the force of a nuclear flash. The Super was gone from her vision now, though it didn't really matter much. She was still all kinds of messed up, couldn't move her legs, could barely breathe and her arm felt like... _Oh god, oh god it hurts!_

* * *

Martin was...not entirely aware of his own actions.

When he'd seen the woman fleeing what almost looked like a deformed Orc, he'd started running _towards_ them, rather than away, as any sane man would have done. Should have done. He hadn't even consciously made the choice to attack the savage until he had, and then he'd been committed. He'd seen the beast strike its victim, and sent her flying, screaming, until she struck the ground again like a sack of bones.

In all honesty, he'd thought her dead until she started throwing up.

He didn't know _why_ the brute was attacking her, or who she was, and still had no idea where _he_ was. But he'd been raised to understand right and wrong, even if he'd never before had to actually put himself in the spot to enforce it. Now, he had. He'd killed someone, even if it was a brutish savage. He'd deliberately and willfully struck it down to save a woman he didn't even know. He trembled with the realization, even as he shook the frost coating from his hands. He'd never... he'd never _killed_ before, not even a chicken or a skink. Anything he'd dissected, it had already been dead then...

"... _please,_ help... _anyone_?"

The woman's voice reached him, not much more than a hoarse plea. It tore him from his doubts, and set his legs in motion before he'd consciously decided to move. He came upon her to a sight of what was clearly broken bones. It was visible through the tattered shreds of her red coat, and blood was starting to soak through, darkening the colors.

She didn't seem to see him, even when he came close enough to smell the vomit she'd spilled. He'd seen _that_ before, at least, and in a twisted sort of way, the sight of a maimed person at his feet was a welcome familiarity. If this was a dream...no, he'd never had one that had all these things, all these sensations. The acrid smell of puke was entirely too real.

He considered trying to speak with her, but realized he'd no notion of what to say, or ask. Was she unharmed? No, definitely not. Was she wounded, and if so, what were her wounds? Again, the answer was obvious. Madame de Crue had impressed upon him the importance of keeping the patient conscious, but... how? Poking her seemed cruel and unusual, and entirely out of the question anyway.

"Ma'am?" Why was he here, at all? Why couldn't he just have done like Mari told him, and stopped working after midnight? The woman seemed to realize she wasn't alone, even as the body of the great, green beast still twitched. He'd struck it in the brain, the thing was _dead_. Hopefully; "Ma'am, are you...awake? Conscious? Can you _hear_ or _see_ me?"

"... _thanks_ " At least no blood spilled out. He still put an ear to her chest, forcing entirely aside his own objections at that kind of breach of personal space. His own too; " _...ow._ "

"Lungs sound fine, no li- liquids." by the gods, why was his first real case a _woman_ , of all things? Couldn't it have been a man, at least? His face was entirely too close to hers when he raised it up from her chest, dirty raven hair splayed out around it; "Your arm's broken."

" _Yeah..._ " cracked lips almost seemed to smile. Her right hand, the one where the arm wasn't clearly shattered, shook as it tried grasping for him. Adrenaline was wearing off; " _Not..._ not doing all that well, is it?"

"Anything else that's broken?" It'd be better if she wasn't aware of just how much a mess her arm looked. The stress might send her into shock. Though... in all honesty, she looked like she was already more or less there.

"Dunno...I- _gah_ " she gasped with pain when he touched her arm. Martin frowned, wrapping his fingers in the soft glow of golden restoration. She didn't seem to notice, or care. Maybe the shock was still too heavily present in her mind to bother with the work of a healer. Non-mages rarely cared how his spells worked, as long as they did; "Can't really...feel much else... You, _what_..."

"Lie still." he forced sternness into his voice, afraid it'd crack from anxiety otherwise. This was his first _actual_ patient, he'd be damned if he misstepped or misspoke. As the golden glow started spreading across her arm, and from there to her shoulder, she seemed to regain some clarity; "You'll be alright..."

"I feel... _really_ wei-" her words halted mid sentence, as if she'd forgotten what she'd say. Martin glanced up, and saw her eyes widening. She was watching him, or rather, she was watching his hands. She didn't move beyond that, and he continued working, carefully reassembling the shattered humerus, as well the radius which had snapped over the middle.

"Six breaks in total..." He'd never dealt with that many on one limb before, but at least there wasn't any risk of puncturing organs here. He poured restorative energies into each break as he joined the bones, waiting for the body to do its thing before he moved on. The woman, meanwhile, hadn't stopped staring, the same, unnerving amazement in her eyes; "I will be done in a moment."

"...what... _is that_?"

"What?" Martin blinked and glanced up, meeting her eyes now. It did his anxiety no good. Coughing, he reverted his own back to her arm, escaping in his work; "What is what?"

"Your... _hands,_ they're..." she blinked, several times as if to dispel sleep; "Am I hallucinating?"

"Your eyes seem normal, no dilation of the pupils..." They were beautiful eyes, too. Deep and brown. And exactly the reason he wasn't overly keen on a female patient. Female colleagues, he could deal with, easily. Women outside of the College, however... risky, in more ways than one; "I can examine you for concussion, when I've healed your arm."

" _Healed my arm_..." she repeated the words to herself, as if it was a different language. Martin still had no notion of _where_ he was, but at least people here spoke Common. For a moment, he'd dreaded foreign words spilling out; "It...does feel better already."

"You still seem..." he wasn't sure how to properly word it, afraid of causing offense; "Am I unsettling you?"

"Just..." once more, her eyes went to his hands. He was almost done with the radius now; "Just tell me if I'm off my rocker, but...your hands, they're not really _glowing_ , are they?"

"They are." he nodded, gingerly rejoining the fractures; "Otherwise, I'd have my papers revoked."

"They're not." she argued, even as she still stared at them. He wasn't following; "Hands don't _glow_ , you know. It's...wait, _papers_?"

"My Journeyman's Healing certificate." Martin said, allowing himself just a shred of pride. He'd worked hard for them, too. Curiosity now took him, diminishing his anxiety; "You've never had to see a healer before?"

"A... _what?_ " she shook her head, then seemed to regret the decision, groaning and dropped her head back on the ground. When she turned away, her eyes fell on the great green beast; "You...killed it?"

"Would you rather I'd not?" He did not look up now, focusing on a fracture he'd not discovered before. That put the total up to seven; "I'm not entirely wont with combat magicks, I'm afraid. A better mage could have killed him before he struck you, but... I wasn't sure..."

"About... what?"

"My aim." Martin muttered, wiping his brow on his sleeve. To go from Cyrodiilic autumn to this... he was glad he'd not worn heavier clothes; "Done."

"What?" turning her head back, watching him again, she blinked at his words; "Done with what?"

"Your arm." he fell back on his rear, taking a breath. His hands trembled still, and he put them behind him for support rather than let it show; "It will be sore for a few days, I think, but I've rejoined the bones and healed the breaks."

For a full minute, she didn't speak. Not one word, though her expression spoke for itself as she raised the healed arm. Though she was quiet, her mouth moved plenty, forming silent words in what looked like disbelieving awe. Martin shifted where he sat, unused to such amazement at his work, and unsure of how to respond to it.

In turn, he found it hard not to watch _her_.

"Would you...mind if I knew your name?" his toes curled as he asked, the old anxiety welling back up. He'd been here before, always with the same outcomes, sooner or later; "I'm Martin."

"Pi... _Piper_ , but... _phew_ , okay." She rubbed at her face, healed arm still at rest; "Martin. What the hell did you just... _do,_ I mean...people around here don't just usually have glowing hands or...throw icicles at Super Mutants, so...what? What's going on? I mean, _thank you_. Lord knows I'd have been dangling from a hook by now if not for you..."

"You've never seen a Healer before?"

"Never _heard_ of one before." Piper said, eyes intent on him. He'd have squirmed under her gaze, if not for how mild it was compared to Madame de Crue, even on her best days; "That...glowy thing you just did, that's a Healer thing? You're not one of those Atom nuts, right? I mean, even if you are, you saved my life, no judgement..."

"Restoration magic?" he asked, wrapping golden light 'round his fingers. She starred in abject amazement, like a child; "...why do I get the feeling you've not heard of magic before, either?"

"Well, usually the magic I know of is a guy switching cards, not...that." she punctuated the last word by gesturing at his hand. Something like a light appeared behind her eyes; "Where'd you say you're from?"

He hadn't, had he?

"The College of Whispers, in Cyrodiil." if she recognized the name, she showed no sign of it; "But...this isn't Cyrodiil. Are we in Hammerfell? Akavir?"

"Boston, America." Piper laughed, a short, girlish sound; "Wow. I mean... _wow_ , I can't even... You've gotta be the first European here in...ever, really."

"First... what?"

"European, you're..." she frowned, sitting straighter as she rummaged around the pockets of her frayed coat; "You're not from Europe? Russia?"

"I've never heard of those places." Martin said, wishing he was back home, and yet at the same time, curious about this new place. If this was Akavir, he could make groundbreaking discoveries, earn himself a place in the books; "Or of America or Boston. I'm...not from around here."

"No kidding." Piper mused, finally having dug out what she seemed to have sought; "Ah, _shit._.."

An alien contraption emerged from her coat, a box of steel and leather. Its center was a circle of dark glass. It was cracked, shards of glass falling to the ground as she tipped the item over. He had no idea what it was.

"Figured as much. Camera got busted in the fall, lense is all cracked." she sighed; "I wanted to take a picture, figured I might as well get _something_ out of this trip."

"What is that?" Martin watched the box with rapt curiosity. Truly, he'd never seen its like before; "A container of some sort?"

"You're not pulling my leg, are you?" Piper looked at him, as if to discern his honesty; "Never seen a camera before? Not exactly a new invention."

"What does it do?"

"It, ah... it takes pictures." she pointed to the cracked glass, and then to a smaller piece of it on the other side; "Look through here, press the button and snap, whatever you pointed the camera at, you've got a still image of it, colors and all."

"I thought you'd not seen magic before?" he asked. Meanwhile, the sun seemed to have faded away, and darker clouds were moving in; "That's... _green?_ "

"Oh boy..." Piper had seen it too, though her expression was too worried for his liking; "We'd better get to shelter, there's a Radstorm coming in."

He'd no time to argue before she grabbed him by the wrist and hauled him along. Back into the ruined city. Piper offered no explanation either, only hauling him by the hand as the skies grew darker, a poisonous green coloring the clouds. Somewhere in the distance, a low growl, like striking metal with a god's hammer, echoed. His skin crawled with a sensation of deep wrongness, even as the warm winds started making his face itch, and the dust that blew around them seemed to glow. And throughout it all, her pace only quickened.

"What is that?" He was unwont to running, and now when forced to do so, speaking came ragged; "What phenomenon... _is_ _that_?!"

"Radstorm!" Piper's voice had lost all joviality, repeating the word as if it would mean more to him now; "Real bad if you want to keep it at two arms!"

He took that explanation for what it was, and picked up the pace. Though he still did not understand the nature of this realm, whether it be material or Oblivion, he understood " _real bad"_. Piper suddenly took a sharp turn, darting down a ruined street where rust and decay had eaten all things metal.

Ahead, seemingly her target, was what seemed like a gate set into the ground. A concrete ramp descended until they were below the street level, and Piper shouldered open the metal gate. It gave way, shrieking on rusten hinges until a gap had opened wide enough for them to enter.

Barely had he set foot within before she slapped the doors shut again, leaving them now in total, absolutely suffocating darkness, whilst the noise of clanging metal echoed away, into the unknown.

* * *

**Something I should probably mention, is that I am going with Boston in its actual size, rather than the smaller version we play through in Fallout 4, and I will attempt to add some realism to the setting without encroaching upon what Besthesda gave us.**


	2. Chapter 2. Children of the Apocalypse.

**Chapter 2. Children of the Apocalypse**

" _ **We left the ruined city behind, descending into the Boston underground. I wasn't yet sure what to think of my new companion, but I wish she'd warned me that the tunnels were no less deadly than the ruins above..."**_

* * *

"That...that's a Radstorm..." Though she'd not yet released his arm, Piper's voice still made him jump where he stood, coming as if from everywhere at once; "It's radioactive shit, coming up from the Glowing Sea. It's... you really don't know what that was?"

He hadn't.

"I've seen storms before..." he muttered, though in truth the Heartland received little that could measure up to the sheer malice he'd felt from that...phenomenon. He would not call it _weather_ "Nothing like that. Cyrodiil isn't...We're used to calmer...Divines..."

A metallic, scratching noise suddenly broke the darkness, as did a small shower of sparks, just enough to illuminate briefly a tiny...something, in Piper''s hand. She seemed to do something to it again, and once more sparks flew. Again, she struck it, but now along with the sparks came a candlelight, tiny and flickering. All the same, it was enough to cast a warm glow about them, and reveal their new surroundings.

Shattered, ceramic tiles and ruined shops, rotten chairs and rusted metal fences, strewn about or left as if just vacated. Yet still, compared to the world he'd just left, this seemed almost pristine. But he still had no idea what its purpose was, if indeed it had one.

"What is this place?"

"Subways." Piper muttered, her voice both muffled and rebounding off the stonework walls; "Used to be people came down here to catch trains, get all over Boston in minutes, instead of hours. Been a _long_ while since anybody's been down here but the ghouls though...wish I had a bit more light..."

"Ghouls?" As he asked, Martin drew out a candlelight of his own, though his was of the arcane sort, and bright enough to shine like a small star in the otherwise absolute blackness. Piper was now in for a wince, as she recoiled from the sharp illumination; "Sorry."

"No it's... _Jesus_ , Martin, at least warn me before you drag a new bunny out your hat?" It was a metaphor, had to be, though he didn't know it. Still, the meaning was...more or less clear? Still shielding her eyes with one hand, the fingerless glove covering it torn in places, he could see she was watching the sphere. Silent, but for an almost inaudible hum, it hovered a meter above ground, bopping ever so lightly. Like a jellyfish in the College's Aquarium; "This is real weird, you know that?"

"Much of today has been..." he nodded, agreeing though not with her exact point; "Beyond the name of this city, and country I suppose, I do not even know where I am. Lest I be dreaming, of course, then I cannot explain my presence here..."

"Well, _I'm_ not complaining." Piper grinned. Her voice sounded like she herself was still stuck in something like disbelieving euphoria. Wasn't _he_ supposed to be the confused one? Tangling with Nirnroot, whilst a pioneering field, shouldn't have caused something like this. He was beyond the Empire, that much he had started recognizing. Piper's accent was entirely foreign to him, and she knew nothing of magic, despite possessing items that defied his own understanding of the more mundane sciences; "As for where we are..."

A plaque of rusted iron bore letters that seemed as if they'd been hammered into the still-hot metal. They might once have been painted, too, but now only varying shades of brown remained, its dull gleam contrasted by the bright spell. His... _companion_ , however, seemed to make some sense of it.

"Chestnut Hill Avenue..." she muttered, a tinge of irritation in her words; "Shit. I _knew_ I'd come far out from Diamond City, but..." In the light of the Candlelight, her features seemed only ever more weary as she cast a glance against the black wall of unknown before them, beyond the reach of his spell; "Well, there's good news and bad news."

Martin said nothing, not really knowing _what_ to say if he'd wanted to.

"Good news is, tunnel's pretty much intact from here to St. Paul street. Means no rads from the storm coming down to fry us like mole rats in a cooker. Bad news is, tunnel's collapsed after that, and we'll have to get on the surface, unless you've got a tunnel-clearing magick spell in your sleeves?"

"Can't say I do." Even if he'd ever taken an interest in telekinesis, clearing something like a tunnel sounded like the work of a dedicated specialist, not some novice researcher; "These...rad storms, how long do they usually last?"

"Minutes?" Piper's laugh lacked any mirth; "Hours. _Days_. Come every summer for the past centuries, no one's found a pattern yet. Just duck down deep as you can behind the thickest walls you've got. Diamond City's case, that'd be the arena underbelly."

"I don't think I like this place very much..." he muttered, in the quiet darkness sounding like he'd shouted aloud; "No offense."

"Find me someone who _likes_ the Commonwealth, and I'll show you a tame Deathclaw." she cracked, squinting into the shadows; "Think you could light up the rest too? I'd love to _not_ walk right into some ghouls."

Another Candlelight _whooshed_ into being, and he let it float ahead, bringing illumination to the creeping darkness. The first one disappeared just the same, leaving the entrance only dimly lit.

"You know..." Piper hummed, starting down the corridor. He followed, keenly aware that without her he'd be even more lost than before. Piper at least seemed a reliable - and friendly - source of information about this new, foreign land. And, just in case that this was no dream, he'd rather have her around; "I'm...not really sure what to do, when I get back home. I'd planned on doing an article on whatever I found out here, maybe something with the Institute, or the Children of Atom, but...I find you, you know?"

"Doing an article?" He'd no notion on what she meant.

"Like...a headline?" she paused in her step, looking back at him over her shoulder. It struck him then that she seemed younger than he'd first thought. But then, his first thoughts had been about keeping her from dying. Patient then...friend, now? It was difficult to discern, made none the easier by her own seemingly misunderstanding attitude; "You don't know what an article is?"

"I'm not a fool." He muttered, taken aback at her tone; "I've just...not heard the word before. You didn't know what a Healer was, either."

"Fair."

She said nothing more for a while, and he found some comfort in the silence, and once more took in his surroundings as she led them down a flight of stonework stairs, the same crumbling concrete and masonry that seemed to dominate this underground network of tunnels. Red tiles lined the walls all the way down, shattered against the floor in countless places, glazing gleaming from the light of his spell, as it hovered above his head.

He was not prepared for the sight that met him, upon emerging into the subways proper. Underground tunnel systems in no way was a foreign concept to him, as the College had its own cellars and storage vaults. But...still, he was taken aback at the sight that greeted him. A vast, cavernous hall that seemed to stretch out into the infinite darkness both to his left and right, with what seemed like canals dug through the center, until...until he saw the rails.

He'd never been to the mines himself, because of course what reason would he have for such expeditions. But, he knew these were the very same kinds of rails that bore mining carts through the tunnels, laden with precious ore. Was the case here similar, only that they ferried people? Such was his pondering that he'd not noticed Piper stopping, and nearly walked into her where she stood.

Was she...praying?

"Is this a shrine?" He asked, quietly, once she seemed to have finished it. He'd not heard her call upon any gods, or even spirits. Still, the gesture was unmistakably one of reverence. Again, rather than an immediate answer, his increasingly enigmatic companion merely hummed.

She did, at least, answer him as she hopped the platform, and started walking down the rails.

"Notice how the city's not exactly _bustling_ with people upstairs?"

"It did seem...vacant." Martin said, trying to find a description that wouldn't offend. So far, he was doing rather well, probably. At least she hadn't told him to sod off yet; "Natural disaster?"

"Man-made." Piper muttered; "Two hundred years ago, all the big, important heads decided to throw their nukes at each other. The whole world basically went up in flames."

"Oblivion..."

"Pretty much, yeah." she shrugged; "Not a whole lot survived, I think. Most who did were either in the Vaults, or down here in the underground when the bombs dropped. First thirty years after, no one could survive on top for more than a day or two, with full protection too. The subways basically became mankind's last refuge, outside the Vaults..."

"Two hundred years?" the Candlelight was dimming, but he'd almost forgotten about it, staring instead transfixed on Piper's back as she walked ahead, trying to wrap his mind around such an apocalypse. Indeed, this was not Tamriel, nor was it probably even Nirn. It was only when he almost couldn't see where he put his feet that he remembered to rekindle the spell; "And the world is still in ruins? Why have you not rebuilt?"

_Crunch_

"Well, you already met part of the reason, back there. Super Mutants, they kinda put a stick in the whole "rebuilding" with all their 'me kill you!' show." she snorted, a sound that cast echoes against the concrete walls, round like a massive, stone tube. Each step crunched gravel, and a heavy smell of stagnation permeated the air; "Then there's the ghouls, raiders, the Gunners, various, mutated wildlife... oh, and the Rad storms."

_Crunch_

True, he'd already felt it himself, the malice of those green winds. Though he still did not understand their nature, he could see how such climate would make any rebuilding of civilisation...somewhat hazardous. With the Candlelight floating ahead now, dancing about like a wisp of its own will, he could no longer see where he set his feet.

_Crunch_

"Oh, and...don't look down." Piper said, her tone quieting; "People did live down here for thirty years. Died down here too."

"Oh, so..." the words dried in his mouth as what felt more like a branch, snapped under the leather of his boot. Revulsion and a mounting sense of fright filled him, and his eyes sought a ground they thankfully could not see. But each step still brought a fresh _crunch_ echoing down the black tunnels. Piper too, walked the same path, each of her lighter steps bringing the same unsettling noise; "...how long does this go on for?"

_Crunch._

"Just a few hundred meters." she said, not turning to face him. She hadn't since they started this walk.

_Crunch._

"All...like this?" Arkay's mercy, how many bodies were lain to rest here, for there to still be so many bones? "How many?"

_Crunch._

"Well..." Piper's voice was almost wistful, as if she thought it an amusing or strange question. It struck him then, that it was simply her complete detachment from the horrors they trod upon. This was no transit tunnel; it was a tomb; "Thirty years, no one could go upstairs. Plenty people upstairs survived the bomb though, long enough to get down here. Most of the bones are from then."

"That's why they're..." what word could he use? They stepped on bones already reduced to fragments, gravel-sized pieces of human remains, cushioned in the dust of what had already rotted away. Some were fresher though, sounding _wetter_ when breaking; "Like this."

_Crunch._

"Yeah." somewhere to his right, hidden away in the dancing shadows, a rat squeaked in indignation. More answered the sound; "Not afraid of rats, are you?"

"I've dissected more than I could count..." the memory, in contrast to his current situation, did make him smile; "What's on the outside isn't so disturbing once you've plucked out their organs with your bare fingers."

"Ew" but she laughed, all the same. It was a better sound now than before, with actual humor; "Hey, that ball of light you've got there..."

"Candlelight?"

"That. Can you stick it to a surface?" as she spoke, Piper neared something on the left side of the tunnel, raised above the ground on some sort of metal walkway. Piper walked over to it, picking up what turned out to be an old lantern, or at least the shell of one. There was no candle within, instead a broken piece of glass in the shape of a pear; "Like, to this?"

"I could." he nodded, trying to block out the sound of fragmented bone, breaking further beneath his boots. They were out of the worst now, but still barely two steps were made without something cracking like an eggshell.

That the spell was then, technically, referred to as a 'Magelight', he did not bother mentioning. For now, too, he would not ask why she wanted the spell stuck within that old piece of scrap. The sphere was dimming now anyway, so when the next came into being, it appeared in the broken shell of glass inside the lantern. In the darkness before, it was not been visible, but now he could see what looked like mirrors within the lantern. Though before the ethereal light had been blinding to look at, now it was even more so, and shone with all its ferocity in a single direction.

"That's definitely an improvement." Piper grinned, hefting the old metal. Martin was almost surprised the hinge did not break; "No offense, but your...magic, was kinda blinding me."

"Apologies." he murmured; "I am used to working behind a desk, not...traversing tombs."

"First time for everything." she nodded, as if it was been a question; "So, we're okay? I should probably, you know, thank you again, for before..." it sounded like he was meant to reply, though...what could he say? That it was nothing? Fortunately, Piper continued before he had the chance; "I can't say I...understand, what you are, where you're from. But your magic, it means you're not mad. I think."

"That's nice." he wasn't sure why it came out like it did, dry and sardonic, but at least his companion seemed to find it funny; "If it helps, I can't say I understand where you are from either, Piper. Not yet, at least...this place is strange, dead but not? The surface air turns poisonous and your share the world with brutish beasts...and down here, you have made tunnels for transit, then filled them with skeletons."

"Yeah, the Commonwealth's a fucked up place, gotta agree with you there." Piper snorted; "But, hey, at least it's never boring. Look, when we get to Diamond City, you can crash at my place. Least I could do, you know, for getting me off the proverbial meat-hook. Then, you...can find your feet, I guess? Won't go unemployed with your magic hands, that's for damn sure."

"Thank you." The notion was not unappealing, but came instead with new, unexpected worries; "Your family would not mind my intrusion?"

"Only family I've got is Nat." she said, turning back against the darkness; "So, anyway. Commonwealth one-oh-one, I guess. This lovely, dank, dark and creepy underground system of tunnels is the Boston Subways...specifically the Green Line. Once, before everything went to heck in a handbasket, used to be people rode trains down here, to quickly get across the city. Then the bombs dropped and pretty much everything upstairs died. Now people don't really use the tunnels anymore, save Stockton's caravans."

"Trains, they are carts for people, yes?"

"That's...yeah, you could say that." she mused; "We'll run into one sooner or later down here, or what remains of them. Thirty years in the same tunnels is a lot of time for a lot of people to scrap everything that can be scrapped. Some stations are even still inhabited, because, you know, why not? Super Mutants don't really come down here, and ghouls you can shoot."

"Ghouls are monsters as well?" she'd mentioned them before, but never explained them; "We have such things, where I come from, I think. Undead that roam, eating the dead. Are these the same things?"

" _Ugh_ , sounds about right." Piper made a sound of disgust; "Ghouls are people who got too much radiation, but didn't die. Most are...okay, just...don't stare. The ferals though, they'll eat your brain like a bowl of noodles. Apparently all ghouls eventually turn feral, so not a lot of people like having them around, even if they're perfectly normal."

Up ahead, something like a pulsating light broke the darkness. Piper didn't immediately seem to acknowledge it, but Martin watched it curiously as they neared, the sounds of breaking bone growing rarer by the footstep.

"Mushrooms?" It was unexpected, to find fungi as the source of illumination. All the same, not beyond reason. Subterranean fungi often acquired such properties, though whether it was by magical means or purely biological, he'd never found out.

"Yeah, but I wouldn't recommend eating them." his companion snorted, amused, but did not stop walking; "We use them for medicine, but apparently eating them right off the stalk at best gives you a glow-in-the-dark toilet. Might give you cancer, too. So, just don't eat them. Wasteland survival advice, and all that."

"You use them for alchemy?"

When she'd said the world was a ruin, he'd not expected the alchemical sciences to have survived. Piper paused, giving him a look he couldn't discern in the uneven lighting. A moment later, she snorted again, not unkindly.

"Sure, wizards and magic, why not call it alchemy too?" she said, giving his arm a light pat; "Be ready for a lot of people to understand very little of what you're talking about. I still don't know what the Hell you are, where you're from, but... hey, I've seen enough weird shit out here in the Wasteland to keep an open mind."

"I...appreciate that, Piper."

"Of course I'm usually armed too." she gestured at her side, opening her torn coat to reveal leather straps, formed around a sheath too small for even one of the Legion's short-swords. It was empty, but the leather seemed well used, yet cared for; "Then I ran into the Mutant, shot everything I had at him then threw the gun. Shame too, was a borderline antique that thing."

"Gun?" For some reason, somewhere in the back of his mind, the word did register. Consciously he had no idea what it meant, but...something was there, alright; "You _shot_ him, is it like a bow?"

No, wait, that sheath could never hold a bow, not even a small crossbow. Then, what was it? What was this _gun_ she referred to, like a life-saving weapon, of such tiny size?

"Wha-" Piper started, rubbing at her face with the free hand. Something stirred up ahead, ; "No, a gun..." she stopped then, stock-still and eyes hard against the darkening distance. The tunnel was a black, gaping maw, from within which came the sounds of shuffling. _Something_ was moving. When next she spoke, it was a whisper; "...would be _real_ useful right now."

"What is it?" he quietly asked, squinting at the darkness. The Candlelight only illuminated a dozen yards ahead, then it was like drawing a line of darkness as its limit. The shuffling came from beyond it, and even without touching her, Matin could sense Piper tensing.

Then he saw them, the sickly glowing, yellow dots, like torchbugs against the darkness. Nothing else was visible, not even a silhouette, and they almost looked to be floating in the air.

" _Ghouls_." she hissed, crouched down as if that would hide her, with a lit lantern in hand; "At least one, but there's _always_ more than one. I hoped they'd get drawn upstairs by the storm. _Fuck_."

"What now?" he muttered.

"Depends..." she turned her eyes from the yellow spots, watching him instead; "That thing you did-"

The first ghoul emerged from the darkness then, snarling and with outstretched arms. Martin recoiled at the sight, from disgust and fright both, as he saw what had once been human. He'd never seen the ghouls of Tamriel for himself, not even a picture. This was worse than anything he'd ever dreamt up for lack of knowing. There were at least ten yards between them and it when it came into sight, but the beast moved with such speed it might as well have been no distance at all, crashing into Piper's still rising form.

She barreled over, backwards, legs pressed between them as a salivating jaw snapped against the lantern's iron frame. Martin stabbed an open palm at the creature, fighting down his fear to conjure up spellfire against it. Before he'd even had the chance, a new set of hungry jaws emerged from beyond his sight, sinking decaying gums and loose teeth into his outstretched arm.

Strangely, he didn't scream as much as he'd thought he would. The pain was nauseating, but he didn't scream. Instead his legs buckled, and he fell to the ground with the creature on top of him, dirty, claw-like hands ripping away at his robes.

With his free hand he started beating away at the creature's head, its jaws still locked around his arm, rotten teeth sinking through skin and flesh. The entire sleeve was already soaked through with blood, the rational, pushed-away parts of his brain filing it under a torn artery. Still he couldn't muster the air to scream, only to pathetically beat against the creature's head, his feet kicking to get its body away from his.

He wasn't entirely conscious of how, or when, but a piece of broken concrete found its way into his hand as he struck the ghoul, and the blow caved in the side of its skull. Its body went limp, though the jaws remained locked around his arm, even as he still struck it again, and again, fear and rage driving his muscles more than any single thought. It was only when Piper screamed that he faltered, seeking her out in the sudden, absolutely suffocating darkness.

His spell had extinguished, and there was nothing but blackness. Blind, he struggled to stand, only to lose all balance as the shock and blood loss struck him like a hammer, and he sunk to his knees. Mere meters away, he could hear her scream, a deafening, pained sound that burrowed into his mind. He moved forward, still clutching the rock, barely even conscious of his own actions beyond a primitive drive. He struck something that wasn't the tunnel wall, and pushed against the ground with what little strength was left in his legs, shoving the wriggling, clawing form off its victim. Doing this blind, he had no idea _where_ he struck, only that he did so _hard_ , scraping the already broken flesh of his knuckles against skin that felt like shark.

But he had not the strength, and his legs gave way beneath him then. The ghoul threw him off, already coming against him with a force he could not match. It rose above him, yellow eyes glowing in the dark.

He finally had the air to scream then, a choking sound that cut short as a heavy, metallic frame crashed against the monster's head with the force of an iron flail, shattering both itself and the creature. At least, such was his guess, considering he could see nothing but the sudden jerking of the glowing eyes, and the crash of metal. Then, the sound of a body hitting the ground, moving no more.

" _Martin_ , you... are you alive?" Piper's voice came from somewhere above him, though he couldn't even make out a silhouette. He coughed, mostly just to make a sound without risking screaming again, overwhelmed by the agony of his left arm; "I can't... see a damn...wait..."

The sound of metal sliding against metal, the same telltale sparks as before. A tiny flame sprung up, dancing in the darkness, though it did illuminate enough that he could make out Piper's silhouette, as well parts of her face. Something was smeared across it, but he couldn't tell if it was dirt of blood.

" _Down_...here..." his arm felt as if it had been lit on fire, pulsating and pumping with a searing agony entirely foreign to him. When he tried to sit, neither arm really wanted to work as it should, and he ended up collapsing on the ground again; "... _fuck"_

"You're hurt." He almost asked how she could tell, in the weak light of the tiny flame, but held his tongue. He'd screamed, hadn't he? Like a wounded animal, he'd looked death's sickly glowing, yellow light in the eyes. Had it not been for Piper... "How... _shit_ , _that stings_... how bad?"

"Give me..." he breathed, harder, struggling to keep nausea from spilling his last meal over himself. Though bruised and probably bleeding, his right hand was all he could still move, and he weakly raised it, pushing his mind and force throughout it. A pathetic, but still illuminating candlelight came into being, overwhelming their immediate surroundings with a pale, unnatural light. At the sight, he could barely muster a groan; " _...that's bad."_

Though he'd known his left arm was a mess, for the pain numbed nearly all other sensations of his body, it was only now that he understood what the creature had done to him. Beneath the shredded and torn remnants of his robe's sleeve, his arm was awash with blood, pumping out of mangled, weeping flesh. Piper hissed at the sight;

" _Shit!_ "

Though her voice felt oddly...muffled, somehow. He heard her, but at the same time it was as if she wasn't speaking to him, or was behind a pane of glass. He felt colder now, than before. This... this was what it felt like, almost losing your life?

"Can you...fix that too?" her voice was smaller, but more insistent than before. Martin was still on his back, though he only really noticed once Piper knelt down next to him, waving her tiny flame along his body. If it wasn't for the pain, he'd have laughed at it. *Had this been some practice tissue in the laboratories, he could have, quite easily too; "Can I do something?"

" _Yes_." To both, in truth, but... He knew how to fix this, of course. It was just, that like Piper was his first actual patient, and now _he_ was the patient; "Move a bit away. I can't see well."

Martin swallowed, blood and anxiety heavy on his tongue, before placing his free hand on the wound. On part of it, rather, for it went all along his forearm, and he could not heal such a wound with ease. If he'd been faster... if he'd not lacked focus, when he needed it, he could have killed the creature before it ripped him open. He did not even dare think of what infections it had carried.

There was no sense of time down here, in the darkness of the tunnels, and even less so for the agony, stretching seconds into eons. Where his hand moved, the wounds might heal, to a degree, but left behind the angrily red marks of tooth and claw, where what had once been human had locked its jaws against his flesh. He was left, after what felt like hours, with raw, scarred skin along the entirety of his forearm's length, and exhausted in body and soul both for all the good it had done.

But the bleeding had stopped.

"Are you...?" he felt shame, as a practiced healer, over not having prioritized his companion over himself. But the feeling was squashed beneath rationality, that if he'd put any wounds Piper might have had over his own, he might have lost consciousness from the bloodloss.

"Fine." he could tell she was not; "I kept the lantern between me and...and him, so it didn't get me. Tore my jacket a bit, but... I'm fine."

"...what in Oblivion was that? Those creatures?" he whispered, his thoughts now on the hopefully dead ghouls close by. The lights had vanished, or maybe they had merely dimmed so much that against the spell-light, they were as well as extinguished. His hands still trembled, clutched around a rock no longer there, cold-sweat running his skin; "They... were people?"

"...yeah." Piper nodded, leaning against the tunnel wall with her legs drawn in, arms around them. Her attention was not on him, far as he could tell, but the direction the ghouls had come from. The direction _they_ were going. With trembling fingers, she dug out some sort of small package from within her ruined jacket; "Once. Now they're monsters, I... dunno, people say they sometimes look like there's still... _something_ left in there, but..."

A thin, white stick was rattled out from the package, clasped with familiarity between two fingers, as her free hand once more flipped and slid the metal box, sparking flame. Martin, having righted himself on one of the crossboards of the rails, watched her, attention split between her words, actions and the darkness. What if more ghouls were waiting for them?

"How are you doing?" he asked, watching her fumble with the small, white twig. For a moment, it seemed like she'd not heard him, and he wondered if because of everything that had just happened, he hadn't actually spoken those words aloud? "Wounds, I mean."

Piper bit down on the white stick, its end aglow the dying embers of a celebratory sparkler, and started breathing in, then out again. Quickly at first, then slowly her shakings seemed to lessen, and her breathing calmed.

"Fine. I'm good, you know?" she muttered through the smoking stick; " _Nh.._ not the first time the Commonwealth's nearly killed me. Only ripped my jacket, so... yeah, I'm good."

She sucked in air through the stick again, and the heavy, mind-numbing scent of tobacco and...something else, wafted through the stale air. Though he was aware of the damage such plants caused the lungs of those who partook in it, he said nothing on it.

"I'm sorry." he said instead, when the silence became too much. He was, in truth, not even sure if he'd said anything until Piper looked up at him, her expression invisible in the dancing shadows.

"For?"

What for, actually? The apology had simply emerged on its own, and he wasn't sure what to follow it up with. What was he sorry for? That he was a terrible combatant, who shied from violence more out of fright than principles? That he'd waited with asking about her injuries until his own were mended? What if she'd had an artery torn, or suffered a concussion?

"We're alive." Piper interrupted his thoughts, her voice bearing the same, forced calm again; "And you got that sucker off of me. Nothing to be sorry for, you know?"

Maybe. Still, his guts were against it. Against the notion that he couldn't have done better. Piper, seemingly oblivious, or simply not yet ready to care about his frustrations, resumed her smoking.

Compared to everything else, tobacco seemed practically harmless. After what seemed like an eternity in the silence of recuperation, Piper took a longer drag than usually, the end of her stick glowing a bright orange. She then offered it to him, wordlessly held between the same two fingers as before.

He did not know what it was, this strange stick. That it was akin to a pipe, he could understand, at least. Piper wasn't speaking, only watching him intently until he accepted the stick - it was some sort of soft fabric - holding it up for study against the dimming light of his spell.

"...you're supposed to put it in your mouth." it was the first time she'd spoken in several minutes, at least, and sounded almost amused at him, like watching a child; "It'll go out otherwise... helps on the shakes."

He did, placing it like had it been a pipe. At first he tasted nothing, but with the first drag of air he nearly choked, having to restrain himself from spitting the stick out. Had he been of a calmer mind, he might have wondered at the gesture, that she would share such a thing with him, in this way.

Currently, his mind was still on the two ghouls, and their nature and the cruelty of a world that could produce such things. If there was no magic here, as Piper claimed... how could they be, then? With each drag of air, he could feel the corrupting smoke filling, then leaving his lungs, but it seemed like his stress and anxiety was leaving with it. His fingers, still clenching and unclenching when he'd first breathed in, now slackened and relaxed.

Nothing in this place made any sense to him, or rather, it made sense in a very twisted, cruel sort of way. The world, this world, was a ruin, its skies turning toxic and monstrous beings stalked the corpse of what seemed to have once been a great metropolis, maybe rivaling even the Imperial City in scale. To think such catastrophe had been brought about by human hand, and without the use of magic at all, boggled and defied what he thought possible. That people then could still live here, when for all intents and purposes it looked akin to the tales of Daedric realms, only further confounded him.

People like Piper, he pondered, if she was indeed the norm. They seemed like himself, like any normal person. She wore shoes, dressed herself to stay warm, and went armed to fend off what creatures and evolution-defying monstrosities might lie in wait. But at the same time, there was a harshness behind the exterior, a resistance to the horrors of this world, of which he'd no doubt only seen a fraction of what was on offer.

He handed the stick back, and like that they remained until it seemed right.

He could not entirely discern what it was, but at some point they both agreed, without a word spoken, that there was no more danger, that the threat had passed and they were, for all intents and purposes, safe.

They walked beneath the dancing light of his spell, casting its just as lively shadows on the rounded, concrete walls. Old, rusty boxes and cords of metal and red dotted the walls, though he'd no clue as to their purpose. The crunching beneath his feet no longer stemmed from the cracking of human remains, but from small pebbles, no-doubt deliberately poured by those who had laid the tracks in the first place, just like at home. Rust had eaten away at most of the rails here, leaving only few spots where the dull, grey of steel could still be seen underneath the red. And then, only when their light passed over, devoid as the tunnel was of anything else that could have served to illuminate.

Though, in some places, he saw what looked like old, broken lanterns, strung together on strings along the vaulted ceiling, or nailed to the tunnel walls. None of them shone, of course, and had likely not done so since the days Piper spoke of, when people had sheltered in these tunnels, as the world ended up above. Occasionally, a skeleton rested against the walls, or was simply laid out on the ground, frozen in its last spasms of death. Their clothes still clung to some of them, eaten thin by time and vermin, skulls opened in silent laughs of missing, eroded teeth.

Piper would turn one over once in a while, completely oblivious to his initial revulsion. Whatever she sought, none of the dead possessed it. He did not ask what, though his mind was abuzz with ideas, guesses and doubts. Coin? It wouldn't be out of the question, and the dead no longer needed what valuables they once owned. Had he been a priest, he'd perhaps have tried orchestrating sermons, for Arkay to take their souls. Even then, it was probably a bit late for such. They seemed to have been dead for quite a while.

A rat crawled out from inside one of them, when Piper moved to turn the skeleton over, squeaking with indignant irritation before vanishing off into the black guts of the tunnels. Martin watched it disappear, and wondered if now, when people no longer seemed to live down here, it had now become the realm of the rats? He'd grown up playing games with his friends, where they would pretend-play at being great heroes of legend, and swat at the cellar rats with sticks and stones. Back then, the underground and the sewers had been the 'realm of the rats' too.

He shook the thoughts off, nodding as Piper gestured them onwards. They walked in silence, ears and eyes straining for signs of ghouls ahead and behind them. Who knew how many side-tunnels and hidden passages there might be, and he wanted to be sure the next monsters crawling out of the deep darkness would not find him unprepared.

Fighting...was never something he'd been good at. As a mage, his magicka recovery was below average, and even had it been better, his concentration under duress was...less than impressive. He worked well enough in laboratories, or with patients who might not suddenly stab him, but ghouls... the terror that creature had instilled in him had entirely crushed any chance of bringing enough focus to bear to kill it with a spell.

And so he remained watchful, eyes pressed against the retreating darkness. He even walked on the rails, just to make less noise that he might better hear the shuffling of feet ahead.

But there was nothing. Only the echoes of their steps against the concrete walls, and the squeaking of rats disturbed by their presence. The monotony of the tunnels started making his mind wander, though he tried his hardest that it should remain focused, and found himself watching his companion as she went slightly ahead of him.

What kind of life did she live? What was her family like, this 'Nat'? Where did they even live? Questions like those, and many others, filled his mind and brought him back, only when something new appeared in the tunnel, something worthy of attention.

In one place, bags of sand lay piled in what seemed like mockeries of walls, or like they'd been left by uncaring workers long dead. Sharp bits of iron protruded from these piles like the quills on a hedgehog, forming makeshift barricades against whatever might come from down the tunnel. Piper said people came down here, but wouldn't all kinds of creatures also try their luck? The lumbering, green brute he'd killed was called a 'Super Mutant'. She'd spoken of it as a whole race, and he could easily imagine such monsters storming down these tunnels, baying for the blood of mankind's last few survivors.

Scattered around these piles of bags, he found small, brass cylinders, hollow and strewn about with generous hand. He picked one up, causing Piper to halt in her steps, as the light was following him, not her.

"Bullet casings." she told him, as he held it against the light, and it gleamed in muted resplendence; "Big ones. We're close to Chiswick station."

"How can you tell?" he wondered, eyes wandering between the _"buh-let-casing"_ and her; "You have been this way before?"

"No." She shook her head, picking up a brass cylinder of her own; "You need a heavy machine gun to shoot these. Back when people had to live in the tunnels, eventually they started trying to kill each other, once it seemed like the world outside had stopped mattering, probably. That or the food just ran out, or the clean water... and you'd be surprised how fast things started mutating upstairs, trying to get down where they could eat people."

She tossed the finger-sized bit of metal aside with a shrug; "Either way, people needed something to defend themselves with. Was a lot of military in Boston before the bombs dropped, tanks too. Not sure how, but the survivors got back upstairs, plucked the machine-guns right off the tanks and brought them back down, ammo and all."

Martin nodded, understanding what she meant even if he had no notion at all as to words such as "tank" or "machine-gun". They were entirely alien to him, lacking even the most basic point of reference.

"And they protected themselves with these." He meant to hide the small cylinder away in his robes - as a curiosity - only to then be reminded of their ruined state. Every pocket he'd had at the front was ripped out; "Only close to where they lived?"

"Yeah, pretty much." Piper shrugged; "Turns out tunnels are real practical if you've got a few machine guns aimed down range. Chiswick's not too far now, usually you only see machine guns around half a mile out from the stations. 'Least, that's how it is at the ones people still live in. North Station's probably the biggest one still inhabited."

"Chiswick isn't one of the places where people still live?" Martin asked, squinting ahead. Nothing could be seen ahead, fingers still playing with the small piece of brass; "How many are?"

"No idea, really." she muttered, pushing over an old skeleton leaning against the wall. Once more, her findings proved lackluster; "I know North Station's inhabited, because all the caravans that don't wanna risk going through Cambridge on the way north go through there. Once you get past Kenmore, most of them are, more or less." disappointed with her findings, Piper walked on, path illuminated by the dancing lights of his spell; "Red Line, that's the main caravan route north and south. Stockton's people have a railcar caravan service there too, if you've got the caps. It goes by Diamond City too."

"You keep mentioning Diamond City." the name spoke of some bejeweled metropolis, but all he'd seen so far was ruin and decay. What splendor awaited him? "But you call the ruined city here "Boston". I don't understand, is it a station?"

"Eh, nope." Piper chuckled, kicking gravel as she walked. Around them the black concrete was starting to come away, replaced piecemeal with fading, yellow tiles and red-painted walls. There was no light ahead, but then again, she'd said this wasn't one of the inhabited places. No reason there should be light; "It's like this old, pre-war arena where people played sports. It's got some solid walls though, so people started settling there once the surface stopped killing you by default. We call it Diamond City... I think it's because the arena is shaped like one, you know? Sorry if you expected something gleaming or, I dunno, _shiny_ , 'cause it ain't."

"Noted."

She seemed to find that funny, though he couldn't himself see the amusing in it. Martin instead kept his eyes forward, pressed against the choking darkness of the tunnel, and ears stiff for the slightest sound that wasn't caused by them.

Nothing, just the repetitive crunching of gravel, and the indignant squeaks of rats. Piper, far from any other woman he'd ever met, found them reassuring.

"Ghouls eat rats. Everything does, really." she explained when, somehow, she sensed his curiosity; "That means, where there's rats, there's usually nothing else."

The logic was sound, though he found the notion repulsive. Ghouls had been humans once, so the thought of them eating rats only added to his disgust for them. It removed them further from what he understood as people. Hopefully, it would make them easier to kill, too.

"How many people live there, at Diamond City?" he asked, hoping to divert his thoughts from the creations of this world's apparent demise. Diamond City sounded promising, if strange. How big had the arenas of this world been, that you could place another city within one?

"Bit over two thousand people, plus minus the loose, you know?" Piper hummed in contemplating tones; "It's basically the Commonwealth's capital settlement, but I think just as many live outside the walls. Wasteland's littered with smaller settlements, usually farms or landfill-mines. Caravans bring the produce to Diamond City, and Diamond City brings the good stuff to the settlements in turn, right?"

A sensible system, he supposed. Half of Cyrodiil was farmland dedicated to feeding the Imperial City, after all. He wondered though, what kind of farmers could raise crops when monsters stalked the surface and the clouds spat poison. The dark thoughts accompanies a darkening tunnel, and he refreshed the Magelight before it would start blinking. He hated the blinking, it felt like he'd have a seizure.

"The good stuff?"

"You know, like guns, tools, education, the works..." Piper explained, her tone lighter than before; "You'll see when we get there. For now, welcome to Chiswick station, and mind the gap."

* * *

**The mod "Tunnel Runner" is excellent when you're imagining them walking through the tunnels. Personally, I am going for a more Metro-like vibe when underground. I like to think the two games can be merged without taking away from the lore of Fallout, even without me introducing any supernatural stuff (like the ghosts in Metro). The intro quote was a product of a friend of mine, and made me realize Martin's voice was a given from the very start.**

**This is proving a tricky story to write (because of only two characters, and Piper is difficult to write well, but easier than Martin, at least) but at the same time it is quite entertaining. I do also have the next chapter of Talia in the works, worry not :3**


	4. Chapter 3. Necropolis

**Chapter 3. Necropolis**

* * *

**The first time I saw the ghouls, I thought them the most terrifying things this new, alien world had to offer. They were mutated, abominations and mockeries of mankind. But the underground still had worse in store for me, things that to this day I still cannot explain...**

* * *

"So, there's lots more people like you, where you're from?" Piper asked. She was holding the flame of her small metal box, her _lighter_ , to a roll of old, block-printed paper, wrapped around a piece of timber. When it lit, the makeshift torch quickly added its own, warmer glow to the pale light of the magelight spell; "Like, the stuff you can do is pretty much nothing new?"

"Something like that." Martin nodded, eyes peeled against the other end of the platform.

Chiswick station, though he'd gotten over the awe of first seeing it, remained a sizable, man made cavern. The fact that it had once, apparently, been beautifully clad in multicolor tiles and lit with lights as bright as any lantern, _that_ still ravaged his mind. It was at least fifty yards in width, and he'd no notion of how long, its ceiling an arch born aloft by pillars of marble. _Marble_. Such a desolate place, and yet they decorated it with _marble_. How rich had not this city been, back before the humans of this realm annihilated themselves with weapons he could barely comprehend?

"Sounds crazy." she whistled, the sharp sound quickly dissipating against the stone. Something scurried along the ground as she walked, a few paces to his right, keeping itself just beyond the reach of her torchlight; "I mean, people don't just throw fire, or heal wounds with magic lights, you know?"

"Why not?"

"Well..." her expression, lit by fire, turned a frown, before she resumed her rummaging through the clutter of long-dead people's belongings, most of it and its owners strewn about as if scattered by the wind; "They just don't. Can't. It's not a thing. Maybe a synth with an inbuilt flamer or... some sort of thingy-magick dispenser could do it, but... Ah! _Bingo_."

"What?" He meant it more as to, what did _bingo_ mean, than anything else. Piper stood from her search, holding aloft a flask of some sort of liquid, black to his eyes; "Alcohol?"

"Better." She struck the top of the flask against the iron railing where the platform ended, breaking off the red-painted top. He was amazed to see the glass flask remained unscathed; "Nuka-Cola. Pre-war gold"

"I see."

He did not. Piper barely even waited for the seal to stop bouncing along the tiles before she took the flask to her lips. Watching her drink was a strange sight, mostly because she didn't seem to do it out of thirst. Halfway done, from the looks of it, she wiped her mouth and handed him the flask, its black liquids still sloshing about within. She grinned.

"Here. You'll wanna taste."

"Didn't you say the war was two centuries back?" He took the flask with some hesitation, sniffing at the opening; "How can this be safe to drink? It's not wine."

"Nuka-Cola doesn't go bad, pretty much no matter what you do with it, unless you open it, of course. Cap's screwed tight on, and the drink's got enough fizzy to last a few more centuries." She laughed, a bubbling sound that echoed weirdly off the walls. It was still a strange sound in these catacombs-like tunnels, but... he didn't dislike it. "Go on, try it. Rest is yours, I'll find the cap meanwhile."

Why she wanted that red thing, he didn't understand. Still, he did gather the courage to taste the odd, ancient potion Piper already had - trying not to think of where the opening had just been - steeling himself as the first gulp of black, buzzing liquid splashed into his mouth.

In the years of his study, naturally he'd frequented the nearby alehouses, on occasion. The strongest he'd ever tried, and regretted afterwards, was some Nibenese Whiskey, with a name he couldn't ever recall. Nor could he, for that matter, recall barely anything beyond the point of said whiskey. It had been strong, far too strong for him.

This...this was like that, and yet... entirely, _incomprehensibly_ different. He lacked for all of his trying, any and all words that could even come close to describing the taste, so alien and yet so very, very right. Like, _life itself_ , bottled.

Before he even knew it, the flask was empty, no matter how fiercely he held it upside down, dangling over an awaiting tongue. The taste lingered in his mouth, clinging to every surface. His tongue felt as if it had caught fire, yet there was naught but pleasure, tingling and as if he'd touched lightning, while his heart galloped away, in exhilaration and delight in equal measure.

"Holy shit, you okay?" Piper's voice only at first registered as something in the background, like something not as important as the bottle in his hands. Suddenly it sounded closer, or maybe not but still, and when he turned to look for her, the movement was so fast he felt his muscles ache from it.

Piper stood a meter away, though actually, now that he looked closer, she was crouching, and yet still at his height. Only then did he realize, he was on his rear, slumped on the cold tiles like a passed-out drunk. Realization dawned with withdrawal, and the bottle rolled from his hand, clinking as it bounced intact on the stone. Piper whistled lowly, an interested smile on her face.

"Damn." she said; "Never seen anyone react like that. You good?"

"I... _yes_." He was, and yet he wasn't, now that the wonderful sensations brought by the drink were gone; " _What_... what _was_ that? What's _in_ that drink?"

"An absolute _shit-load_ of sugar, my guess." she grinned, offering a hand. He took it; "Reason they last this long, and got so popular. Once you've had one, you'll want another. And another. Better than chems though."

"I've...never tasted anything like it." he admitted, feeling somewhat foolish now for having ended up on the floor. Sugar and addictions made the drink sound more like Skooma, though he'd never wanted to try such substances. But... Piper seemed to be fine, and if nothing else her judgement had seem them this far.

"There's gonna be a _lot_ of firsts when we get out of here."

"All of them like that?"

"Probably. Maybe?" she shrugged, kicking over a skeleton nestled against the wall. This one still wore clothes, and scraps of tissue still clung to the pale bone; "Sorry _ol' timer_ , don't need that no more."

Martin shook off the last of the rush, still feeling the buzzing sensation in the tips of his fingers. People had actually ingested this on the regular, before they ruined their world? It seemed to him too much like skooma indeed, and...maybe that was why? Had they all been drugged senseless when destroying their world, high on Nuka Cola?

"Martin." Piper's voice echoed down the hall as she beckoned him over. There was a skip to his step as he approached her, watching as she lifted some strange device off the skeleton. It struck him first that she'd found a tool of some sort, obviously, but as to what it was... one half was wood, and reminded him of the stock to a crossbow. The rest, however, was a single, metallic tube. A cylinder of what looked like iron, clasped tightly against the wood with bands of more metal; "Lookie here."

"What?" If she expected him to recognize whatever it was, she was going to be sorely disappointed. Maybe she was too, for the grin mellowed out when he said nothing else. Piper struck the alien contraption over her knee, _breaking_ it open; "You...destroyed it. _Yay?_ "

"I didn't _destroy_ it, doofus." she scoffed, yanking the thing again. It snapped back together again, a discreet metallic _click_ that somehow sounded right. He didn't know why, though; "It's a shotgun. Pretty good condition too. Still got a shell in the chamber, means this poor fella didn't even get a chance to defend himself."

Martin watched her handle the weapon with apparent familiarity, aiming down the tube as if it was a cannon. Of course, no cannon he'd ever heard of was this small, or packed "shells" rather than balls. But, maybe it was the same thing? Though he couldn't quite tell _how_ it worked, it seemed a good bet these people had somehow managed such a feat of engineering.

"It's some sort of cannon then?" he wagered. Piper looked up from her inspection, pausing for a moment before she nodded; "I understand its purpose then. That's a "gun", a cannon scaled down to fit in the hands?"

"Pretty much." she shrugged; "' _course_ , most people don't call it a cannon unless it's a big ol' six-shooter or that kind of stuff. This one looks more like one of Bunker Hill's pieces... _yeah_ , see that mark there?"

She gestured to a small pattern of notches made into the iron barrel. It vaguely resembled an 'S', though heavily stylized. Piper ran her fingers over the barrel again, as if it was a precious object. In fairness, with the dangers of this world, a cannon you could fire from your hands would indeed be quite the find.

"There's a trader out of Bunker Hill, Stockton." she explained, putting the weapon on the ground, opening aimed away from them both, before setting upon a backpack discarded next to the skeleton. He noticed there was still some hair left on the scalp, clinging to decayed skin. Body wasn't more than a week old, but the lack of rotting tissue and organs meant something had eaten him. Bone structure definitely confirmed the gender; "He's got a whole operation set up across the Commonwealth, selling arms and armor to settlers and settlements, mercenaries, the works. Makes the guns himself too, or his people do anyway. _Pricey_ , but... heh, better than being robbed and dropped, you feel me?"

"Pretty much." he nodded, familiar with the concept. He knew the Legions had the same kind of arrangement going with the great forges in Anvil. He'd never seen their weapons up close though, so he didn't know if they had marks too. Too late to inquire now, anyway; "What killed him, you think? I don't see any fractures, no dislocations or torn-off limbs. Can't be more than week old, but body's nearly picked clean."

"Radroaches, probably." she muttered, taking things out of the bag. Extra clothes, a roll of gauze, a small pile of the same kind of bottle caps she'd taken from the Nuka Cola, two metal cylinders with pictures of beans on faded, yellow paper, a headband of some sort with a glass disk... and shells, as she called them. Fifteen in total there were, of uniform size and shame, with a red exterior topped by what looked like a brass or copper alloy, neatly packed into tiny boxes of colored paper-like material, with depictions of deer-skulls on the front. One had eight shells, the other only seven.

Finally, she stood, and looked over the finds with a strangely satisfied grin on her lips.

"Oh man... Gotta be the best scavenge I've ever been on, and didn't even plan on it." she nodded; "Right. We'll take his stuff. Not like he's gonna need it now anyways, and better us than raiders or supers, right?"

Looting the dead was not a dilemma he'd ever had to deal with before. Mostly because he'd never had to deal with dead people before, and practice dummies did not have much in the way of personal possessions. The more civilized, sheltered part of him wanted to argue against it, that they were robbing the dead. Luckily, his more rational side won out.

By quite the wide margin too.

"What are Radroaches?" he asked instead. Piper actually jerked a little at his question, then seemed to catch herself before saying something.

"...oh… _yeah_ , I guess you don't know what those are." she stood, hefting the pack on her shoulders. It seemed to fit her well. She chuckled; "Right, sorry. It's just you could ask a three-year-old anywhere and they'd know. I'm not used to people not knowing."

"Not a local." he reminded her, tapping his forehead with a faint, hesitant smile. It wasn't surprising that she'd think something like some kind of animal was supposed to be well known to all. She started walking, leaving him to follow. Soon enough they'd reached the end of the platform, where once again the tracks ran off into the gaping, black maw of the tunnel.

"You know cockroaches, right? Bugs. Well, take a bug, then turn it big as..." she tailed off, pausing before the tiled walls turned back into ribbed concrete. She spread her hands out; "...like, this big. One of them's not much trouble, you could make a meal out of it if you've got a big stick. Sometimes they come in swarms though, and then it's all about running fast as you can."

"Disgusting." he frowned, trying to imagine a roach the size of that. It was almost a dog, and he found the notion unsettling. Then again, he knew spiders sometimes grew even larger; "You...don't have giant spiders too?"

" _Jesus_ , I hope not." she scoffed; "Small ones are bad enough, with all those eyes..." she eyed him for a moment, her expression hard to read in the weak light; "...why, you have some sort of super creepy sort of spider back at your home?"

"Sometimes." he shrugged. Piper, he noticed, had put the headband on, and was picking at the small glass disk. It looked a lot like a window, or maybe an attempt at jewelry forging. Before he could ask what exactly by Zenithar it _was_ , she seemed to find whatever her fingers sought. A weak, pale light erupted from the disk, brilliantly bright against the darkness, and nearly made him jump. It quickly grew in intensity until it would rival his own magelight; "-I thought you knew nothing of magic?"

"Flashlight's not _magick_ , it's just a tiny lamp inside." she tapped a finger against the glass, and the light flickered; "Usually I've got my own. Had to drop everything when Mr. Big-Green-and-Ugly tried to gut me though. Come on, there's a tunnel to be braved."

Though he did nod, and walked along, Martin's mind was entirely lost within that tiny, light-filled disk. They had no magic, these people, but yet they had wrought such contraptions? How could it even work? He'd only ever heard of anything approaching this kind of scientific advancement with the Dwemer, but even then there was a degree of understanding, of how their artifacts worked.

Here, he had no idea.

"A tiny lamp?" he tried hard to keep his eyes on hers, not the flashlight, when he asked; "How does it work? How do you keep it fueled?"

"There's a battery inside, tiny thing. Pre-war, of course, but nothing's new around here anyway." she shrugged, walking slightly ahead. The shotgun rested in her hands, aimed at the ground; "It's electricity running through those little wires, making a string of...something, glow. Not sure what, could probably find out when we're back in the city. Glass then amplifies the light and bingo, flashlight."

He wanted to say he fully understood, but he didn't entirely. At the same time, she'd explained it in such simple terms that asking again... he'd feel like a fool if he did. So, he merely nodded, keeping instead his eyes on the tunnel ahead.

* * *

Piper halted them when they got to the first few sandbags, well before they could even see any actual sign of the next station.

She didn't seem at all in a good mood anymore. Rather, it was as if a ghost had appeared, or some terrible memory. Kicking a sandbag, she opened the shotgun and ran a finger along the brass top of the shell within. She was nervous.

"Uh, look there's... probably a good idea I fill you in, before we get to Sutherland." she finally said, snapping the barrel back in place. Her voice had taken on a quieter mood, as if watchful that the tunnel itself might be listening in, alert for being smeared by its own occupants; "Kinda postponed it, sorry..."

"The station, you mean?"

" _Yeah,_ it's..." she trailed off again, like she had at the tunnel's entrance. But this seemed different, a far more tense air about her; "...look, do you believe in ghosts, like the superna... _yeah,_ okay I mean you have magic, but... _ghosts_ , like dead people's spirits hanging about? The real spooky shit?"

"Ghosts?" He'd never seen one himself, but knew of them; "Yes, I know what they are. More or less."

"You... _do_?" she seemed surprised, enough for him to understand that maybe that kind of thing wasn't common here. Or, known at all. This was a strange world; "' _course_ , magicks and all. Okay so it's... Sutherland's one of those stations where people holed up after the bombs dropped and... lived there for a few years while the surface was hot enough to boil an egg. But people tell stories of it, like scary as shit stories. Story goes, after a few years underground there was some kind of... dunno, maybe an underground flooding or something, but all of a sudden rats just started swarming out of every hole and grate and... yeah it's basically one of those scary stories you don't want to remember when underground."

He could guess at the outcome, even if she hadn't finished the story. One rat might bite your finger, but it would run away. _Swarms_ of rats, on the other hand... he understood well enough what that would do, if they suddenly flooded up into a small space with people. Endless masses of muscle and teeth, gnawing and biting and tearing apart whatever they found edible. _Whomever they found._

"I suppose... people didn't live there anymore, after that."

"Yeah, no one was really keen on resettling a station after everyone that'd lived there got eaten alive..." Piper muttered darkly; "Not the most attractive real estate…"

"Yeah..." he muttered, not knowing whatever else he could say. It was a revolting thought, entire communities eaten alive by so many rats it might as well have been a flood. How big were those rats then? Like the ones he'd already seen, or had they like roaches grown, more like Skeevers; "...they're not flame retardant, right?"

"Nope, and I thank God for _thát_ small mercy." Piper started forward again, the beam from her headband illuminating the tunnel as well as his own spell had. Shell casings, the same kind they'd found at the entrance to Chiswick, littered the floor, rusted beyond recovery. The air felt damper too, than it had at Chiswick. Had they moved downwards, or maybe they were near underground reservoirs? The tunnel itself gave nothing away, revealing only the concrete walls and cast-iron tracks. Only their own breathing broke the silence, oppressive as it was, and echoed through the light-forsaken place.

It wasn't long before they found the first skeletons, gnawed bones strewn from where rats had dragged them around. There was barely anything left of the clothes they'd once worn, and the skull was a few feet from where the last of the spinal column ended. Even so, it was easy to tell the poor bastard had been trying to leave, headed for Chiswick. Someone or something had stopped him.

"Get used to the sight." Piper muttered, her mood having visibly soured by the meter since they crossed the sandbag boundary; "Rats don't like fire. Any chance your magicks can make that?"

"They can." Martin replied, flexing his fingers. He'd never actually tried using his magic for combat before, but... it had worked out well enough with the super mutant, hadn't it? If he was just prepared, he could do it; "I've never done it before, used magic to kill, that is."

"You killed the Super Mutant."

"I did." he nodded, stepping around the bones of new skeletons, all bearing the same marks of decades or more of gnawing. Ribs were broken open by countless marks of teeth, thigh bones gnawed apart in the hunt for marrow. _Rats_. He was already starting to hate them; "I can."

"Great." he could see her tightening her grasp of the gun, and loathed himself a little for it. He wasn't useless, he knew it. But, he was starting to feel like a child led around, sheltered and pampered. He'd never been in this kind of danger before, never even been _mugged_. Piper...seemed to have grown up in it; "I'll keep this handy though, just in case..."

Strangely, once they made it into the actual station itself, the skeletons had disappeared. Where before they had had to sidestep the decayed bones, suddenly they had stopped appearing at the edge of the light. The humidity had gotten worse, though, and it was colder too. With his robes in tatters, he felt the discomfort directly on his skin, and liked the place even less.

Piper, if she felt anything, did not say it.

Sutherland Station seemed to have been constructed from the same template as Chiswick. It bore the same colors, marks and had the same amount of columns supporting a similarly sized, cavernous ceiling. It could have been Chiswick, too, if not for the smell.

Part of studying for a healer's journeyman papers was a degree of familiarity with rats, being by far the most common spreader of plagues and disease in general. Skeevers mostly spread infections, though, while the common rat bore fleas and could enter homes, shops, granaries and stores. The smell of their droppings had been one he never quite forgot.

The memory was made all the more vivid as that same, rank stench struck him with full force as they entered the station. Piper made a disgusted sound, holding an arm to her nose. He did the same thing, trying to breathe through his mouth only. Even then the stench permeated everything, every breath of air _tasting_ like centuries of vermin and filth.

There was, usually, a trick to rats. On their own they were not much of a threat, even to novices and the untrained. A brown rat would rather flee than pose any sort of danger.

Strangely, what he couldn't identify at all within the unlit chasm of the station, was rats. Piper's story had him on his toes, ears open for the faintest sound of rats. Yet, there was no squeaking in the darkness, no eyes reflecting the flashlight's beam when Piper looked around.

"...I don't hear anything." he said, voice low, barely more than a whisper. She didn't respond at first, though he noticed her head turning slightly left and right, as if to pick up sounds otherwise unheard.

"Doesn't mean they're not around." she muttered, finally; "Rats don't stay where there's no food. But ghouls wander in here sometimes, I bet. And people know of the place, how it was abandoned. There's _tons_ of things down here that could set a scaver up for life... or end it, more like."

Two hundred years was a long time for a skeleton to remain intact, even remotely, and especially in a place infested with rats. But, if visitors were regular enough... those bones back there, at the sandbags, they might not have been as old as he'd first thought.

It did not help his opinion of the place. It was a discomforting notion how a civilization grand enough to have wrought the metropolis above, could be reduced to the point of hiding away in tunnels such as these. It brought his thoughts to home, to the shining city of the Imperial capital. Resplendent, gleaming, it was a beacon of humanity and the Empire's glorious triumphs. It was, foremost, a symbol of culture, science and the exchange of ideas. Commerce, trade, prosperity. The Empire was all this, and so much more.

But had this place been so as well, back in its day? It had seemed so, from what little he glimpsed of the necropolis earlier, its ruins still towering over the landscape like archean titans. Each and every house he'd seen was wrought in brick or steel, and there'd been not a single scrap of thatch in sight. How resplendent had this place been then, back then? Back before this world came to an end, however temporarily so it might have been, this 'Boston' might have even rivalled the Imperial City itself in wealth and power. How many people had lived there? He'd already forgotten Piper's words on it, if she had indeed mentioned a number, but it had no doubt been in the hundreds of thousands. That alone was more than the province of Skyrim, though hardly a tall bar to beat, he knew. Even then, the Imperial City numbered around four hundred thousand within its walls. How many here?

How many lives had been lost when the world ended? Piper spoke of how many had been saved, in their tens of thousands, she'd claimed. Tens of thousands, was that ten thousand people or ninety thousand? Souls beyond comprehension snuffed out in moments, or sentenced to decades of languishing underground, in the darkness beneath what had once been their home? The Subway, Piper called it, the vein-like network of tunnels stretching out beneath the city like arteries beneath the skin, concrete tubes and tunnels, corridors that probably stretched out further than any who lived now even knew. How many of them were in absolute darkness, empty of life beyond what vermin crawled through? How many people had been able to survive down here, in the sunless decades, surviving on...what, exactly? Rats? Mushrooms?

The thought of such an existence made him want to scream, to be confined for life within these tunnels, never seeing the sun unless you risked death from poisoned air. And even then, these blackened hallways were not the safe haven those who escaped the world's end might have hoped, teeming with rats and ghouls and... and whatever else eventually made it down here, validating all those sandbags and weapons. People had even fought people, humans against humans when there was nothing worth fighting for left anyway. Places like Sutherland or Chiswick, where people had once lived, now remained as mausoleums.

" _We should get out of here."_

"Yeah..." he muttered, agreeing. The place was giving him the actual creeps.

"What?" Piper asked, turning her head just enough that she could see him. She didn't seem to have expected him to respond.

"I agree, we should." he said, rubbing at his neck. This place was damp, and cold. It felt like the temperature was dropping for every step he took. The hairs stood on his neck, when he saw Piper's breath, turning into vapor as it passed through her light; "I don't like it either."

Small feet padded along the tiles somewhere, deeper inside the station. Small, but not small enough to be a rat. It would be close enough to see if he peered over the platform, probably, but… he didn't want to.

"Should what?" Piper slowed her pace now, face turned fully towards him, a frown on her face that was not just irritation; "Hmm?"

"Leave." he clarified, feeling...odd. Like the toils of the day were only now catching up to him. Tired, worn down. So tired; "We should."

" _Dad?"_

"Mmm." she nodded, though keeping her eyes on him. Martin blinked, trying to figure out if he'd actually just...heard her wrong, maybe; "You...okay, Martin? Not looking too great."

" _What's that sound?"_

"Tired." he muttered, wiping at his face; "I'm...not exactly used to all these things. I'm good, worry not. Let's just leave this place."

"Feeling it too, huh?" Piper looked about, though she kept her light from actually penetrating onto the platform. As if doing so would prevent something from leaving, and joining them on the tracks; "Smart people don't end up having to do this kind of shit... place gives me the heebie-jeebies."

" _In the walls, they're…"_

"How much further?" Till they were back in the tunnel, he left unsaid. But Piper understood, he could tell. Skin crawling, he made the sign of Arkay to at least ward of some of whateve resided here. He couldn't tell if it made any difference.

"… _hear? Like scratching, what…"_

"Dozen meters, maybe."

" _Mum? Mum?!"_

Something nagged at the back of his mind, like a presence within the station. Something _more_ than rats, but...also nothing he could put to words. Echoes of small, padding feet against the stone floor came and went, like a barefooted child. They ran along the edge of the platform, so close his skin crawled whenever they came close, so close he could have reached out and touched whatever made them. _Rats, must be rats. Ghouls would have just attacked. I'm tired, it's exhaustion affecting my… just need to get some rest, somewhere._

" _Run! RUN!"_

But the padding feet were _awfully_ close... and Piper's words returned to him, of the stories people told... _all of a sudden, rats just started swarming out of every hole and grate._ The image it conjured was more akin to a flood than anything living. He couldn't even imagine the sound. But there was something, in the back of his mind, like it was dancing about the edge of his senses…

" _Rats! They're-"_

"Do you... _hear_ something?" he swallowed and asked, afraid what the answer might be. He did not know if he would prefer a yes or a no. The cold, clammy air of the station was sending his skin crawling, and every hair upon it stood like a stake. In his bones, he felt something was wrong. Like something was going on that he couldn't explain. It was like putting your ear to a seashell and trying to make out the sounds.

Piper stopped, bringing them both to an unwanted halt. She stood there, for what felt like hours. And the padding feet never stopped. They closed and they departed, changing directions within the station itself, it seemed. Like a child _was_ running about, silent and mum but never stopping. Never slowing.

"Don't you fucking try and scare me, you know?" she scoffed after a while, hoisting the gun again; "There's nothing. Rats, sure. But... nothing more, right?."

Her words did not reassure him. For a moment, right then and there, he wanted to grab her shoulder and shake her, _make_ her listen, make her _hear_ those padding feet, the whispers by his ears. But more than anything else, he wanted to _leave_ , and if he started making a fuss... if he tried to make her hear, it might take longer before they were away from this place.

" _You_ said this place was haunted." he pointed out, edging further from the platform. The echo his voice made, for a moment, sounded as if dozens of voices muttered among each other, only to fade and disappear. Hundreds of them, it had sounded like, men and women both, indistinguishable and inhuman.

"I said _people_ said it was haunted, _Jesus_..." she growled, but her pace quickened. Only bit left now; "I didn't expect you'd start... what...freaking out?"

Her voice cast itself amongst the unseen pillars and walls, splitting into whispers again, as if they'd just waited for a chance, anything to latch onto that could feed them. One sounded so close the mouth would have been by his ear, and Martin snapped about, flame boiling in his palm, ready to strike at... _at nothing_...

There was nothing but darkness, and against the bright flame dancing in his hand, even blacker than before. Piper had stopped where she was, watching him with clear surprise etched into her face. He snuffed the flame, already feeling like he'd erred by acting up when...when there was nothing.

Except the whispers lingered, longer than any echo should. Not a strand of hair on his body wasn't standing now, ice running fingers down his spine. He swallowed, forcing his breaths to come in steadier, calmer. It did not help on his mounting dread of this place.

"You... really don't hear anything?" cold sweat ran down his forehead, irritating his eyes as he scanned Piper's for... for anything, any sign that she was picking something up. There was nothing.

"...No, I don't." she shook her head, the light from her forehead dancing across the platform. It briefly, for a moment, skipped into the station itself, and the shadows danced and fled and came where it went. Some of them seemed... his gaze averted when Piper grabbed him by the arm; "But you're _not_ looking great. Come on, we're nearly out."

This place was wrong. Martin fought the urge to run the last meters as Piper's light illuminated the entrance to the tunnel. It waited there, open and inviting, a promise of relative safety from whatever haunted this ungodly place. Every step of the way he uttered silent prayers to Arkay and Akatosh both, not certain of what god would be more helpful here.

He passed the concrete ring.

Almost as quickly as they had come, the whispers were gone, as were the feet running on stone. Suddenly, there was silence again but for the rats in the corners and the darkness, an almost comforting sound now because it was...natural, familiar.

The temperature was picking up again, it felt like, and no longer was Piper's breath visible before her. Had she even noticed it before?

"Still hearing things?" she asked, now gently, the irritation from before vanished from her tone.

He shook his head, breathing in the stale, humid air of the tunnel. Meter by meter, they were putting the cursed station behind them. Whatever ghosts haunted its halls, he wanted nothing to do with them, and was content in leaving them where they were. A bead of cold, salty sweat rolled into his eye.

How could this place even _be_ haunted if Piper was telling the truth? If there was no magic here, ghosts should not be able to linger at all, right? Had he misunderstood his basics on the arcane fingerprints of souls? That, more than anything, was what truly terrified him of that place.

If it wasn't ghosts, or spirits, then what was it? No one lived in that place but the rats, and yet... he'd heard them, the voices. He'd heard running feet, small enough to be a child's. But there had been nothing when he put fire forth to see them, and Piper's flashlight had revealed...nothing but shadows.

"It has stopped." he said at last, his mouth dry as parchment; "But…"

"I didn't hear a damn thing..." Piper muttered, though there was no disbelief in her voice, at least; "Rats, sure, but... nothing else. What'd you hear?"

He did not know what to answer exactly, and for a few moments only the sound of their steps through the ancient gravel filled the tunnel. What exactly should he say that he'd heard? Ghosts? He didn't even know himself if it was, or something else entirely. No rats were they, he knew that much at least. No rats could make those sounds, no matter how big or how many.

"People." he said, though the word came out only with some hesitation. It sounded...dumb, to say that when clearly no one but the rats still lived there; "I think. I heard them speak first, _We should get out of here_ , they said. I thought it was you..."

" _Jesus..."_ Piper whispered, casting a glance back through the tunnel. The opening to Sutherland was already out of the light's range. It was infinitely far away and yet infinitely close. Too close; "...that's when you said..."

"Yeah..."

"Oh man..."

"I didn't think there could be ghosts here, if there is no magic..." he tried, the explanation sounding weak and almost as an excuse to himself; "But those sounds, they... I can't explain it otherwise."

"Well..." she sighed, though it turned into a deeper breath, and paused before exhaling again; "...we got through it. We're alive, spooky shit stopped being spooky when we got to the tunnel. _Whatever the Hell it was_ , we're done with it now. People did say that place was messed up..."

"That's..." he stopped himself before insulting her. She hadn't heard or felt the things he had, it was no wonder she could be this calm about it. He breathed, waiting for it to no longer bear panic, before he spoke again; "...an optimistic perspective."

He would admit to being...somewhat taken aback by her recovery from the station. But, again, she'd not heard it, or felt it. The echoes of the dead, or maybe it was all in his head, a product of her stories about the place.

No, no he'd definitely heard the voices, and the footsteps. They had been real, he knew that. _What_ exactly they had been, however, was an entirely different thing, and one he loathed to consider. If this place knew nothing of magic, did that mean it didn't exist here at all? No, again he had to dismiss it. Magic was as universal and omnipresent as air and dirt. It _was_ here, or he'd have no power himself to cast even the smallest flickering flame.

Then, these people had simply not discovered magic? Or, rather, perhaps it was the more reasonable assumption that the destruction of their world had sent the very concept of magic into Oblivion? Had all those with the aptitude for it died out, leaving only the ungifted? Even then, there had to be magicka all around, he could feel it with every breath, even if... it felt _fainter_ , weaker than at home.

Maybe this world was further from Magnus than Nirn? The very idea was alien and difficult to process, senseless beyond comprehension. There _were_ no other worlds but Nirn, for the celestial bodies were the Aedra. This was no theory, but simple, inarguable fact.

But then, how could there be spirits here, if there was no Magnus, no sun at all? How could he have magic, if there was no flow of magicka from the god of magic? Did not Oblivion surround this world just as it did Nirn, a starry scape of spirits fleeing creation? Spirits, or maybe even Daedra, what manner of entities he'd just encountered did not count amongst the mortal realm, he _knew_. The terror invoked in him at their presence was otherworldly.

"Hey, I'm a reporter. I deal with spooky shit, and bad stuff all around, to get the stories." she shrugged, and Martin blinked as she spoke, realizing he'd almost forgotten she was there; "Speaking of which, gotta find a way of adding this to a new headline." She spread out her hands; ' _Tunnel Terrors_ ' or _'Dreaded Darkness'_ maybe?"

"...people would read that?" he asked, trying to clear his mind. If they had been spirits, the voices he'd heard, it had to mean they were bound to the place of death. Necrology had never been his field of study, nor had Necromancy, but he understood the basics. A horrible death, mass slaughter and massacre fit well the requirements for hauntings.

"Hell yeah they would." Piper grinned, though it faltered somewhat after a few moments; "Well, some of them will. Diamond City's got a school but, just because people can read doesn't mean they really bother. Last time I had a real ripper of a story, I... do you hear something?"

He did.

A sound he couldn't place echoed through the tunnel, a strange sound that didn't seem to resemble anything he'd ever heard before. Ahead was absolute darkness, but the sounds that came made it feel as if the tunnel was coming to a stop... and yet, there was a familiarity to the sounds, something he _should_ recognize.

"I do." he said after a moment's thought, coming up empty of ideas. Still the sense nagged him, that he should know.

"Oh great, I thought it was my turn to hear voices there for a moment." Piper chuckled.

It was something simple, something _obvious_. And it was still getting more and more humid with every minute that passed, each step they took churning gravel increasingly soft and... _wet_?

"Wait." He stopped, and so did she. With a wave of his hand, a magelight appeared and floated before him. Another gesture sent the sphere ahead, dancing through the air as if born on unfelt winds. Suddenly the ground mirrored the spell, reflecting the light it cast; "Is that... _water_?"

* * *

**Ah, it is good to be back at it again. Finals are - hopefully - over. Hopefully, because of the way our grading system is delayed so you never really know if you've passed or not until a month after. Yay for our system.**


End file.
